a ring-shaped membrane behind the cornea of the eye
by Klioud
Summary: Post-KH II. Pre-KH DDD. Sora's mother never knew.


_Author's Note: I wrote this not only to celebrate the international release of KH III, but as a thank you to the series. I was about eleven or twelve years old when I first played Kingdom Hearts. It was exactly what I needed at that time. It brought me comfort, joy, and hope. It still does, even now. No matter how KH III turns out, no matter how needlessly convoluted or silly things may be or become, I'll always treasure this series for what it gave me._

 _Thank you. Especially you, Sora._

* * *

There was no way you could have known.

It began before the sweat had a chance to dry on your skin. Your newborn son stretched a heel into the crook of your elbow. Laid the side of his head against your collarbone. The hospital's dim florescent lighting paled to that which your son housed within him. Although the sun would not rise for a handful of hours, it felt like you held daybreak in your hands. Your inhale lengthened as he curled against you. Something other than air swelled in your lungs. It told you to never let go of him.

There was no way you could have known he was already gone.

Sora has something in common with the insects that swarm the lone cage light illuminating your back porch. Moths and other things gathered around the light just as your son did under it. You would often find him lying on his stomach surrounded by seashells and popsicle sticks. Crayons and bird feathers he thought were uncommon. By the smiles of his best friends.

You did not know: his first act in existence had been to share his light with someone broken an Ocean away.

You did not know: one of those smiling friends had found her way to the shoreline of your world by the light of his own.

You did not know: he is drawn to light just as it is drawn to him.

A part of you has always understood that he would not be yours forever. You did your best not to think about it as you laid with him on the beach. The tide crept higher and higher until it plastered the legs of your capri pants to your own. He would giggle when you blew raspberries against his belly. You would giggle when he went wide-eyed at the water surging past his ears. In the space between the tide flowing and ebbing, you felt something glorious. Something like eternity.

The framed photographs and instant film snapshots are poor imitations. You do not complain: they are all you have. That desperation alone keeps them on the walls and shelves and the refrigerator door long after the pictures fade in the way things that have seen too much sunlight do.

All memory of your son fade along with them.

You come to forget how a seven month-old Sora would crawl after a toddling seventeen month-old Riku. In your sun-bleached memory, Riku is only your best friend's son and not your son's best friend. This seems enough to explain why he and the mayor's mysterious daughter liked to sit for hours at a time together on your back porch.

Riku's disappearance hurts you nearly as sorely as it does his mother. Unlike you, she had an inkling of what Riku saw whenever he looked out at the ocean. She noticed the glint in his eyes when Kairi first washed up as a seashell might on the beach.

You never did. The ocean did not keep you prisoner. The sunlight that streaked the waters and the shadows cast by waves never looked like the bars of a cage. When you gazed out at the ocean, you saw something like the walls of your living room and the windows in your kitchen. Something like the door in the foyer and the three steps leading up to your porch. You saw the colour of your son's eyes.

You saw home.

So you were not nervous when your best friend took your hand into her trembling own and mumbled something about a raft. You just laughed. Squeezed her hand. It never occurred to you that Sora might not see the ocean as you did. In this time before you forgot you had a son, you believed he would find the first two or three hours out on the raft exhilarating. He would remember by the fourth the jars of paint he forgot to put the lids back on. The extra socks he had meant to take with them. The mango-marinated kebabs you planned on making for that fictitious day's dinner. The tide and his heart would then return all three of them to the islands.

Or so you thought.

You do not know what it is that Sora sees when he looks out at the ocean. Maybe he sees the colour of his own eyes. Of your eyes. He might see in it the hues of Kairi and Riku's eyes too. But the ocean is never just shades of blue and green: the dawn turns it fuchsia and violet and indigo. Dusk turns it amber. Cloudy days see the ocean dyed grey.

You never imagined that Sora might look out at the ocean and see worlds upon worlds of eyes staring back.

There comes a day that one of the photographs hanging in the hallway on the second floor catches your eye. Some colour has returned to it: enough that you can just make out the crescent of a boy's smile and cheekbone.

It is more than enough.

There is a door on this floor that has been locked for as long as you can remember. Neither you nor your husband has ever felt compelled to see what it is on the other side. It became _just one of those things_. Something you would get around to doing eventually.

The door handle turns easily in your hand. Your heart breaks at the sight of his neglected bedroom.

For the first time, the ocean looks like a prison to you. Sora is out there somewhere. It has been well over two or three hours since he had left: you beg the tide to return him to you. Wish with all you have for a riptide to open a way for you to take to him.

You did not know that Sora is much like a moth. If you did, you might not have been so startled to find him on your back porch. The cage light illuminates his smile.

A sob erupts from you as you embrace him. His neck is against the crook of your elbow. The side of his head rests against your own. Although the sun is just about done setting, it feels like it has risen already. Everything inside you tells you to never let go.

You do not hear the insects as they buzz about the light overhead.

You do not need to.

Something in you knows that he is already gone.


End file.
